"Thurgood" at the Booth Theater, with Laurence Fishburne in the title role as the Supreme Court justice.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

It’s a safe bet that “Thurgood” is the only play on Broadway at which the announcement of a famous legal verdict is greeted by a burst of heartfelt applause.

Does that make it sound less than thrilling? Well, yes, this solo show starring Laurence Fishburne as the venerated Thurgood Marshall is a no-frills documentary in the first person, essentially an opportunity to watch a movie star deliver a history lecture. But since Mr. Fishburne is an effortlessly compelling actor, and the history in question is charged with a moral urgency that still resonates today, “Thurgood,” which opened Wednesday night at the Booth Theater, is surprisingly absorbing, at times even stirring.

For audiences nostalgic for the progressive era in American history in which Marshall played a crucial role, the show may actually feel like a sweet escape to happier times, every bit as cheering (and a whole lot more edifying) than the giddiest of Broadway musicals. At the end of the play Marshall recites from a Langston Hughes poem opening with the following line: “Oh, let America be America again.” If those words elicit either a sorrowful sigh or a stirring of fierce hope in your heart, you may find this superficially dry evening of theater as restorative as a long soak in a bubble bath.

That brief contribution from Hughes is about the extent of the play’s lyricism. Written by George Stevens Jr., a writer, producer and director of television and film making his debut as a playwright, “Thurgood” is not distinguished by psychological depth or dramatic intensity, although it has been given a tasteful production by the director, Leonard Foglia. (The stucco-colored flag sculpture that doubles as a video screen is a nifty touch from the set designer Allen Moyer, presumably inspired by Jasper Johns.)

Mr. Stevens, who wrote and directed the mini-series “Separate but Equal,” about the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, has studied his subject thoroughly and with passionate interest. He may cling doggedly to linear chronology, textbook style, but he does have the smarts to use verbatim quotations from Marshall as often as he can, seasoning the trek through autobiography and legal procedure with anecdotes that reveal Marshall’s playful sense of humor.

While arguing a case of discrimination against black servicemen in Korea, for example, Marshall slyly criticized Gen. Douglas MacArthur for denying that he approved the segregation of those under his leadership. Pointing to the regiment’s all-white brass band, Marshall observed, “Don’t tell me you can’t find a Negro who can blow a horn.”

Mr. Fishburne enters as an aged but still vigorous Marshall, retired from the Supreme Court and returning to Howard University, where he earned his law degree, to give a speech. (The University of Maryland, which had the best law school in his home state, would not admit blacks; one of Marshall’s early civil-rights victories helped end that policy.)

The black-framed eyeglasses, the halting step and the cane are dispensed with quickly. Mr. Fishburne’s Marshall sheds the infirmities of age as he plays tour guide to his illustrious past, and he doffs and dons his jacket as his recollections vary in formality.

Photo

Laurence Fishburne as Thurgood Marshall in a one-man show that documents his role in the landmark Brown v. Board case.Credit
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

After a few minutes of colorful family history (the Marshalls were partial to lively names like Fearless and Olive Branch; Thurgood was the young Marshall’s own revision of a longer handle, Thoroughgood), Marshall tosses out a question that draws the focus to the courtroom cases that shaped his life and led to the reshaping of American law and indeed American society. “How many of you’ve heard of Homer Adolph Plessy?”

Not ringing a bell? It was the Supreme Court’s 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, Marshall reminds us, that gave federal legal sanction to “separate but equal” public facilities for the country’s black and white citizens. Although he is probably best known today as the first African-American to sit on the Supreme Court, Marshall’s profound impact on the culture derives from the long series of legal cases he won (and occasionally lost) as chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The battle to end the sanctioned racism enshrined in the Plessy decision culminated in Marshall’s victory in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954, which laid the legal groundwork for the civil-rights movement of the next decade.

If Marshall’s life story is related with no great theatrical invention here (the artful “Primo,” written and performed by Antony Sher, was a far more stylish stage memoir), the plain facts inevitably stir powerful feelings — of admiration for his steadfast championing of the ill-used, of delight in his ability to find humor in dark circumstances, of dismay at the recalcitrance of institutional discrimination in America. With the presidential candidacy of Senator Barack Obama putting a renewed focus on the legacy of racism, as it is viewed by Americans both black and white, the play serves as a healthy reminder that separate drinking fountains, to cite one shameful practice, are just a generation or two in the past.

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The role does not allow Mr. Fishburne to draw deeply on his rich resources as an actor, even if it requires significant stamina. (The play clocks in at 90 minutes.) The smoldering gravity he brought to his roles in movies like “What’s Love Got to Do With It” and the “Matrix” trilogy is replaced by a more genial variety. Mr. Fishburne also brings a subtle physical dynamism and a sly humor to the role, which gives the material a useful buoyancy.

“Thurgood” naturally climaxes in the scenes depicting the arguments and the verdict in the Brown case. The last half-hour or so, taken up with Marshall’s later career as a federal judge, as the country’s solicitor general and as a Supreme Court justice, almost feels like an afterthought. Eventually Marshall plops down in a chair and simply starts reviewing his general opinions on significant cases from his tenure on the high court, sometimes in language bathed in banality. (“Sure, we know how far we’ve come — but we also know how far we still have to go.”)

This passage does, however, serve as a stark reminder of how radically the court evolves over the years as its makeup changes. (I’d almost forgotten that for a period of several years during Marshall’s tenure, capital punishment was illegal in this country.) Depending on your view of the jurisprudence practiced by the court when Marshall served, and of the kind on view today, the reflections “Thurgood” evokes may be sobering or even dispiriting.

But the heroism of Marshall’s life’s work and the hard-fought civil-rights victories achieved under his stewardship are truly uplifting. As I left, I found myself misty eyed, recalling a celebrated line from a speech by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that I have always found moving, in which he cites a belief that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

A theater review last Thursday about “Thurgood,” a one-man show about Thurgood Marshall at the Booth Theater, referred incorrectly, at one point, to the Supreme Court’s 1896 ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson in citing Marshall’s efforts to end segregation while chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. As noted elsewhere in the review, the ruling enshrined de jure segregation (segregation by law), not simply de facto segregation (segregation in fact).

A version of this review appears in print on , on Page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trials and Triumphs On the Road to Justice. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe

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